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Comment by dropit_sphere | Hacker News Reader

Man, as someone trying to gain weight, this article was kind of depressing. Sure you can get a ton of calories if you add a bunch of carbs or fat, but do you know how much stuff you have to eat to get a caloric surplus on a protein-based diet, without the addictiveness of carbs? Pretty much any time you think of it, it's time for some milk/peanut butter sandwich/hard-boiled egg/spinach.

I know, I know, first-world problems. But the corollary to "it's so easy to get fat eating junk" is "it's surprisingly hard to get big eating well."

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Several people have mentioned trying to follow Dwayne Johnson's diet, and they end up spending all their time (and a substantial amount of their money) preparing chicken and cod.

http://www.muscleandfitness.com/nutrition/meal-plans/smell-w...

If I were trying to eat that diet and not break the bank/use all my time I'd invest in 4 things: 1) A ricecooker. 2) A food processor. 3) A sous-vide/vaccum sealer. 4) A Costco membership.

The ricecooker makes rice and keeps it warm all day. The food processor makes quick work of chopping veggies.

You could pack the cod/chicken in vacuum bags and freeze it, and then pop it in the water bath when it's time to eat. The sous-vide means you're not worried about over-cooking/attending to the process so you can do other things while your food cooks.

Costco will sell you high quality cod and chicken at ~$10/lb (probably less in store) and steak around $20/lb. You could similarly buy rice/potatoes/fish oil there in bulk.

Admittedly you're still spending $50+ on food/day, but that's not out of the question for someone earning $150k/year.

That said, it is probably much easier when you're earning $150m/year and can afford a private chef.

Especially when you can write literally all of it off as a business expense as well!

> Costco will sell you high quality cod and chicken at ~$10/lb (probably less in store) and steak around $20/lb.

Not sure where you're shopping or how much cod costs, but chicken is more like $3/lb ($2.50 on sale, and it can be frozen - and yes whole chicken is cheaper and more flavorful, but you get less protein per pound and it's just easier to compare) for boneless skinless chicken breasts and $5-10/lb for various cuts of steak around here, which makes it much more affordable.

And don't forget the Costco rotisserie chicken! I don't know what the cost/pound comes out to, but considering all the work that goes into cooking it, it's an unbeatable deal. I think it's well known it's a loss leader for them.

Buy several of those for the week, portion them out as you like. throw away the skin to minimize a bit of the sodium, though I'm sure a bit is also in the meat, so for the truly neurotic this maybe a deal breaker.

But if I were trying to just go for low cost, low maintenance protein with some semblance of taste, this would be the way to go ( for me ).

To be fair, Dwayne Johnson is still a much better deal per pound than, say, Justin Bieber.

The trick is to cook all the food en masse, in one fell swoop, maybe once or twice per week.

The trick is to be a millionaire and hire a personal chef.

Not to mention a plethora of PEDs so you can grow enough muscle to burn all those calories.

And the consistent hours and hours of hard work in the gym. Day in, day out. A lot of which was before he was a millionaire.

Im also pretty sure he does most of his own cooking. The current Mr Olympia, Phil Heath, certainly does.

Diet > Training > Meal timing / cycling etc > Drugs.

This comment and your other sound like you think drugs are not a big part of the equation, which is totally wrong.

You can take PEDs and barely work out at all and eat junk food all day and you'll make more progress than even the best training/diet regime done with the highest intensity. There are studies that show PEDs and not working out at all resulted in more gains than rigorous training without PEDs.

> Diet > Training > Meal timing / cycling etc > Drugs

Haha, good joke. You should work for a supplement company. They can always use more people peddling that myth to gullible youth with money to burn.

"Train like Phil, eat like Phil, look like Phil! Just ignore the fact that he's taking enough drugs to kill a small horse, that totally doesn't matter and you WILL achieve the same results if you buy our plans!"

Where did I say that?

Diet and years of training when coupled with the top tier genetics will get a person very far. Even with average genetics it will. My comment was in retaliation to how quickly people overlook the years of grind, dedication and hard graft.

Of course the drugs let guys get past their genetic limit but they should be used only when everything else in on point and has been for years. Hence the heirachy in my post. It's not a duality, plenty of grey there.

If it was all drugs the how come idiots like Boston Llyod are not Mr O?

The Rock looked like he barely lifted prior to becoming famous. You can even find pictures that are clearly post-gyno surgery (clear indication of steroid use) where he still looks more fat than fit.

1. Bostin went overboard with the drugs, but his original transformation proves how easily a good cycle quickly trumps diet + training.

2. Olympia judging is more political than objective. Just look at Sadik's placing in Classic Physique this year if you want crystal clear evidence.

Most people I know get grossed out when I mention this, but one way I saved a bunch of time re: all the chicken I had to eat for my bulking diet was to just buy canned chicken breast in bulk [0].

It's not nearly as gross as you think, and it saves so much time!

[0] http://www.costco.com/Kirkland-Signature%E2%84%A2-Premium-Ch...

What is so hard about throwing 10 chicken breasts into the oven one night a week?

There's a lot of prep/clean-up I just don't want to deal with. I've tried this method before, and it just didn't work out.

All the washing of things you have to use in intermediate steps really adds up. And unless you eat chicken breast for every non-breakfast meal, 10 cooked chicken breasts will get gross in the fridge pretty quickly, so you'll probably want to do something like 3 breasts at a time if you're only eating one meal with chicken breasts per day. This means doing meal prep twice in the week, as opposed to once. If you don't refrigerate them, then you have to wait for the breasts to thaw, which is time I don't want to spend every day, multiple times a day potentially.

I have a busy schedule, and every hour counts some weeks, so the time saved after buying canned chicken breast really adds up.

If you don't want to cook in bulk, a pressure cooker is very easy as well. It takes about 15-20 minutes to build the pressure and cook the chicken, but my own time investment is somewhere around 30-45 seconds.

The chicken does come out moist and tastes awesome, but that goes for the outside as well which I don't mind that much, but you can also toss it on the grill for like 20-30s a side after it's done if you want nice grill marks and a little crispier outside.

Is there a specific recipe you have in mind? (honest question, I'd love to throw 10 chicken breasts into the oven one night a week)

I used this calculator[1] to sum the nutrition in that diet, and here's what I got: http://i.imgur.com/xdQftNY.png

Serving Size 4358 g Amount Per Serving Calories 7,890 Calories from Fat 774 Total Fat 86.0g 132% Saturated Fat 19.2g 96% Trans Fat 0.0g Cholesterol 1330mg 443% Sodium 1835mg 76% Potassium 10461mg 299% Total Carbohydrates 1165.3g 388% Dietary Fiber 55.4g 222% Sugars 44.7g Protein 570.8g Vitamin A 165% Vitamin C 486% Calcium 92% Iron 504% Nutrition Grade A-

I noticed this doesn't include the 60g protein and the 32oz gatorade in the notes at the bottom of his diet.

There's not really anything special in there either, it's basically Meat + Rice/Potato + Vegetable - which is the diet I grew up with and what I would consider typical American diet (although maybe I lived in a bubble).

[1]https://www.caloriecount.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php

Ha that calculator was amusing to play with. Evidently my dinner last night (stir fry that I cooked at home) was 1250ish calories. Good thing I don't need to worry about scurvy!

https://i.imgur.com/oxVBEgi.png

Buy the biggest slow cooker you can find. Once or twice a week, fill it with huge chunks of meat, onions, parsnips, garlic, salt, pepper, chicken broth and whatever else you like. You now have dinner for most of the week.

This is also a good strategy for people who are time-pressed or who simply don't like to cook.

I love this strategy. One thing that I like about it is that the volume of vegetables you'd reasonably use makes it very difficult to over-eat on. This would be a difficult meal plan to use to gain significant weight.

interesting, how do you store the food so it doesn't go bad? freezer or fridge? air-tight ziplocs or ordinary plastic containers? :)

What medical contraindication do you have for carbs, or is this just making life difficult for yourself?

(Conversely, what do you have as a handy low prep widely available lunch in the low-carb world that doesn't involve bread or pasta?)

I'm currently on a 40% protein, 20% fat, 40% carbs split, which is pretty common for male lifters who trying to lose weight and increase strength at the same time. For a powerlifter, this might be combined with around 40 to 50 heavy sets per week.

The high protein numbers are intended to support muscle protein synthesis. (I could drop to 30% protein according to most studies, though.) The high carb numbers are intended to support muscle glycogen replenishment and still leave me with enough mental energy to actually write code for a living. The low fat numbers are simply because something has to give.

It seems to work. It certainly works much better than my previous macronutrient breakdown, which had less protein and less carbs, and which left my lifts stalled and left me feeling like roadkill.

Anyway, eating a large quantity of lean protein is boring and time consuming. It's easy to blow 2000+ calories on fast food meal, but if you eat 800 calories of lean protein a day, it requires planning and work.

In a pinch, I used to take a bunch of greens (spinach or kale) and dump black beans, salsa and some cheese on top, and throw it in the microwave. For breakfast, I frequently do something similar, by putting a lot of greens, beans, salsa, and cheese on top of eggs in the skillet. Put the lid on it until the cheese melts or the eggs are cooked to your liking.

Leftovers for lunch can be cheap, healthy, delicious and basically no-prep. For a low-carb option I like sauteed Brussel sprouts, green beans and protein (pork or tofu are my preferences); if you have a big skillet you can cook that and something else on the side for 4 meals (dinner and then lunch for you and your dining buddy). You can experiment with seasonings to your liking, and add some variety by picking seasonings (ginger, spices, soy sauce, etc.) from a variety of regional cuisines.

A few low-prep protein high lunch items include any form of aged, dried, or smoked meat, cheese, hard-boiled eggs, and a number of various nuts.

Could also go for some pemmican, premade or made ahead of time.

I don't really pay attention to my macronutrition, beyond just having a general sense for it, but I'm at roughly 3000-4000 kCal daily, before alcohol, which, well, different subject entirely. I'm still at a deficit though, and still losing weight, even though (like you), I'm trying to gain.

That being said, meal planning and grocery shopping are some of my least favorite times of the week. It consumes a ridiculous amount of mental energy. I don't mind the cooking, even though my time is super short, but trying to simultaneous solve for budget + time + calorie ( + extras like "reduce meat consumption") constraints is really very tough.

I generally have a problem with balancing shopping, storing, and cooking time wise. You need to buy the right amount of things, figure out more or less what you're doing to do with them, make sure you don't forget about them, and then hope it doesn't spoil on you in the wrong order.

Then people wonder why many don't like cooking at home, especially with fresh ingredients. I'm a big fan of frozen/canned/packaged stuff for this reason... my chickpeas or soba with tofu never fail me. Or the frozen salmon fillets. But reportedly it's unhealthy.

I keep meaning to sit down and start writing a tool to help me with this, but I keep being too busy with other stuff. If you could combine a nutritionist with awareness of local grocery availability with budget and time (etc) requirements with recipe websites... You'd save me so, so much time and effort planning meals.

> but do you know how much stuff you have to eat to get a caloric surplus on a protein-based diet, without the addictiveness of carbs? Pretty much any time you think of it, it's time for some milk/peanut butter sandwich/hard-boiled egg/spinach.

Milk is pretty carb heavy.

Peanut butter is mostly fat with a little protein.

Spinach, insofar as it provides calories, is almost entirely carbs.

Except for eggs -- which are still fairly high fat:protein ratio -- those are all odd choices for a "protein-based diet, without the addictiveness of carbs".

If you're on a ketogenic diet then nut butters are your best friend and probably the only thing that would keep a vegetarian from losing their mind.

Chug a whey shake 3-4 times a day ? Unflavored whey in bulk is about as cheap as it gets in terms of protein/$ and it's optimal BV for muscle protein synthesis, extremely fast to prepare and you can add stuff in for flavor/fiber (eg. Cocoa powder and powdered oats)

The phrase "first world problem" needs to die. It's nothing more than invalidation of real concerns and issues based on poorly calculated relativity, and a very dangerous mentality because it effectively promotes doing poorly to get simple empathy from people.

And people have been worried about getting big without getting weak, fat, or unhealthy for much longer than the first world even existed...

I wonder if there will become a time where globalization has evened out living standards for most of the non-wealthy, and "first world problems" become "modern world problems," and real problems like obesity become taken seriously, instead of derided as a reflection of "poor values."

I eat 3,000 calories a day with 40% of my calories coming from protein. The key is to do bulk meal prep at the beginning of each week and eat a lot of chicken and seafood. I have two packed lunches for today - one is homemade cashew chicken, and the other one is a homemade turkey sandwich. Supplement that with a couple whey protein shakes throughout the day and you can hit 40% protein easily.

Why 40% in particular? 300 grams of protein per day, every day, sounds incredible (~1.5kg lean meat), is there some science explaining the effects of such amounts of protein?

My actual calorie/macro amounts vary based on whether I am trying to bulk/cut/maintain. Two weeks ago I just finished a cut where I was losing 1.5 lbs/week eating 2200 calories/day and I was at 40% protein. I lost 25 lbs during that time - although probably 80% of the weight I lost was fat, I also lost some muscle and a lot of strength. I imagine my strength loss would have been even worse if my protein wasn't that high.

So right now I'm trying to find my calorie level where I can get back to gaining muscle and this time I'm going to try to gain as little fat as possible. This is extremely hard to do - if you are eating just too little you'll be wasting workouts, and if you are eating just too much you'll find yourself putting on a lot of fat (and then being forced to lose 25 lbs).

So I want to stay as clean as possible while finding my target calorie level. Once I find that level in the next couple of weeks I will dial it back down to 30% protein.

For someone who is bulking, the "street science" says 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body weight is sufficient. So unless the parent weighs 400 lbs, 300 grams of protein is a gross overkill. Your body cannot metabolize that much protein.

Of course, some people are in the "better to have too much protein than too little" camp, which I guess works. But it's not a requirement by any means.

I like what Michael Pollan says. If a food item is being advertised, don't eat it. Not as easy as it sounds but a good goal to strive towards.

In Defense of Food. A 3min video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37NHX2iZrBA

Bleh. This is equivalent to saying that you should never eat at restaurants. A menu is literally an advertisement for all the food items.

It's fine if you don't want to eat out, but I would not consider it a "good goal" for most people.

In the video, the context is specifically supermarkets, and the author (Michael Pollan) does qualify his statement with the word "likely" so it isn't universal.

Taken in that context, it's a good rule of thumb. Less advertised food items do tend to be healthier, because they generally require more meal prep and are just raw components.

Fair enough. Taken as a global "never buy advertised food", I'd consider it a poor goal. In the context of the supermarket it mostly means don't buy frozen pizza and other premade food. Which I guess is fine advice in general.

That's literally exactly what the article is saying.

"As you’ll see below, it’s not so hard to eat bountifully and stay under 2,000 calories. It’s just hard to do so at most restaurants."

It's fine if you want to eat out, it's just not the best way to achieve your good weight loss goals.

That message was pretty weak given that they did things like fill out restaurant meals with soda and milkshakes, but for the home cooked stuff they used black coffee and diet soda.

You can totally eat reasonable portions at restaurants. You can lose weight eating at restaurants. Yes, it's probably a bit harder, mostly because you don't fully control the portion sizes, but it's entirely possible. Many restaurants also have reduced calorie menus now.

Yes, you're right on all counts. The article was stacked, and anyone who cares already knows to avoid fries and milkshakes. And it is harder to count when eating out, but it is doable if you pay attention and slowly getting easier over time.

That was a good video, thanks for sharing. Nothing groundbreaking, but nice short presentation on it.

Why are you on a protein-based diet if you are trying to gain weight?

Muscle growth. A controlled calorie surplus with a good macro split of high protein and the rest split into carbs and fats, the % of which depending on goal.

So, by most research [1-4], you need unlikely more than 1.8g/kg of body mass. Slightly more if you're _cutting_ weight, and less the more well trained you are. Let's count high (2g/kg) for the sake of argument. I have no idea how big you are, but let's say you weigh 90kg. That's 180g of protein a day.

That's 667g of chicken a day, or less if you combine it with yoghurt, eggs, beans, protein powder, etc. That's ~1050kcal if going just chicken.

That's all the protein you need. If you're gaining, I'm assuming you're aiming for 2500kcal and up. 3000? 4000?

Eating any more protein than that is a waste at best, and kidney stones at worst. Just eat whatever you want on top of getting your protein quota. Carbs aren't great, but some won't hurt you. And you should really go for more fat, and that's very calorie dense.

And just to reiterate: I'm counting very high on protein, it's unlikely you'll use more than 150g a day, if that. And that will significantly decrease the amount of kcal you'll get in the pursuit of protein. Go nuts with the rest.

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22150425

[2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19927027

[3]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24472635

[4]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22935440

On the "Actually dropit, it's quite achievable if you plan for longer than ten minutes into the future" correction---yeah, you're right. It's just cathartic to complain, ha. Thanks for your reply.

Heh, I get it. Anyone should go with what works for them. I sure as hell have tried handfulls of different macros/diets/regiments to see what fits me physically, socially, mentally, timewise. Good luck!

3250 even though im currently injured. This might not end well ;-)

I still follow the 1g per pound even though im aware its too much based on research. Its a habit now. I was just answering in the the context of why high protein in general. Not high protein zero carb. I should have made that clear.

Nope. No reason not to be eating carbs when trying to gain muscle. Yes, you need protein. No, that doesn't mean you can't also eat carbs. In general if you're trying to gain muscle you should be eating quite a bit of carbs (and fat) because the alternative is to make it really hard to eat enough, for no real reason.

Agreed its undoubtedly easier. 40/30/30 or a 40/40/20 etc. Only real reason i can think for OP to do it is part of some form of prep?

Similar personal experience and communities like https://www.reddit.com/r/ketogains/ make it clear to me what the easiest way to keep your weight optimal is. Personally, I gave up on bulking on low-carb diets. It takes too long, I feel bloated all the time, and it just isn't fun.

Keep up the good fight :)

... first world problems indeed.

Carbs are not addictive? Avoid trans and poly-unsaturated fats (including peanut butter), not carbs. Eat fruit, drink orange juice and milk, moderate amount of potatoes, butter, coconut oil, eggs, chocolate, ice cream, jello, pudding, etc. Look into the work of Ray Peat, and you will realize carbs, and especially sugar, are not evil.

Have you tried Soylent?

https://www.soylent.com/

> protein-based diet

Well there's yer problem! Drop the fad diet.

I shouldn't have used that phrase. What I meant was "diet that includes enough protein and vitamins, and has a caloric surplus---which, relative to my prior (terrible) eating habits, is "protein-based."

I've been through plenty of bulks and cuts, and it's very easy to eat a surplus if you don't impose silly limitations on yourself.

My personal preference is to blend the calories and drink them:

    - Milk
    - Oats
    - Peanut butter
    - Banana
    - Whatever else you like (flax seed, whey powder, etc.)

Plenty of calories, good macros, and very easy to consume in large quantities.

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